190.
** Burnet, vol.i.p.

315.
*** Which met on the 22d of January, 1543.
**** 33 Henry VIII.

c 1.

The reading of the Bible, however, could not at that time have much effect in England, where so few persons had learned to read.

There were but five hundred copies printed of this first authorized edition of the Bible; a book of which there are now several millions of copies in the kingdom.
Even that liberty was not granted without an apparent hesitation, and a dread of the consequences: these persons were allowed to read, "so it be done quietly and with good order." And the preamble to the act sets forth "that many seditious and ignorant persons had abused the liberty granted them of reading the Bible, and that great diversity of opinion, animosities, tumults, and schisms had been occasioned by perverting the sense of the Scriptures." It seemed very difficult to reconcile the king's model for uniformity with the permission of free inquiry.
The mass book also passed under the king's revisal; and little alteration was as yet made in it: some doubtful or fictious saints only were struck out; and the name of the pope was erased.